Chapter 4 — ଖାଦ୍ୟ ସମ୍ପଦର ଉନ୍ନତୀକରଣ (Improvement of Food Resources)

Every living thing needs food for energy, growth and repair, and human beings obtain almost all of theirs from agriculture and animal husbandry: cereals such as rice, wheat and maize for carbohydrates; pulses such as gram, arhar, moong and urad for proteins; oilseeds such as groundnut, mustard, sesame and sunflower for fats; vegetables, fruits and spices for vitamins and minerals; and milk, eggs, meat and fish for animal protein. India's population has grown from 36 crore at independence to more than 140 crore today, and it continues to grow, while the area of cultivable land has hardly changed and is actually shrinking as cities, roads and factories spread over farmland. Producing enough food for everyone therefore depends on getting more from the same land: higher yield per hectare, more crops per year, and less loss between field and plate.

India has done this once before. In the 1960s the country faced famine and depended on imported wheat. The Green Revolution, built on high yielding varieties of wheat and rice, irrigation and fertilisers, multiplied cereal production several times and made the country self sufficient in food grains. The White Revolution (Operation Flood) did the same for milk, making India the largest milk producer in the world, and the Blue Revolution raised fish production. Yet the problems have not gone away. Yields in many states, including Odisha, are still well below those of the best farms; millions of people, especially children, remain undernourished; and the intensive methods of the Green Revolution have exhausted soils, lowered water tables and polluted rivers in the areas where they were applied hardest.

The goal today is therefore not only higher production but sustainable production: farming that gives good yields year after year without degrading the soil, water, biodiversity and climate that farming depends on. Sustainable practices include mixed farming (crops together with animals), intercropping and crop rotation, organic manures, biological pest control and the careful use of water. The approach is summed up in the phrase integrated farming: combining agriculture with animal husbandry, fish culture and bee keeping on the same farm so that the waste of one becomes the input of another; cattle dung feeds the fields and the fish pond, crop residues feed the cattle, and bees pollinate the crops.

Odisha illustrates the whole problem. Rice is grown on about two thirds of its cultivated land, mostly in a single rain fed season, and yields are lower than the national average; the coast and the lakes give fish, the tribal districts grow millets and pulses, and floods and cyclones regularly wipe out a season's crop. The methods studied in this chapter are the tools by which the state's farmers can raise both production and security.

Improvement in crop yields is approached in three ways: crop variety improvement (choosing and breeding better seeds), crop production management (nutrients, water, cropping patterns) and crop protection management (weeds, pests, diseases, storage). This topic deals with the first. The aim of variety improvement is to develop varieties that carry the characters the farmer wants, and to supply their seed to farmers in quantity, since good seed is the cheapest input a farmer can buy and everything else depends on it.

The characters that breeders aim for are:

• Higher yield: more grain, fruit or fodder per plant and per hectare.
• Improved quality: baking quality in wheat, protein content in pulses, oil content in oilseeds, sweetness and keeping quality in fruit, and grain shape, aroma and cooking quality in rice.
• Biotic resistance: resistance to diseases, insects and nematodes, which saves the cost of pesticides.
• Abiotic resistance: tolerance of drought, flooding, salinity, heat, cold and waterlogging; for Odisha, varieties that survive submergence for two weeks in a flood are of special value.
• Change in maturity duration: shorter duration lets the farmer grow two or three crops in a year, reduces the cost of cultivation and allows the crop to escape late season drought or pests; uniform maturity makes harvesting easier.
• Wider adaptability: a variety that performs well in different climates and soils can be grown over a large area.
• Desirable agronomic characters: tallness and profuse branching in fodder crops, dwarfness in cereals so that they use fewer nutrients and do not fall over (lodge) under the weight of grain or in wind.

The oldest method is selection: choosing the best plants from a field and saving their seed, which farmers have done for thousands of years and which produced the traditional varieties. The main modern method is hybridisation: crossing two genetically different plants so that the offspring combine the good characters of both. The cross may be between two varieties of the same species (intervarietal), between two species of a genus (interspecific) or between two genera (intergeneric). The parents are crossed by removing the anthers of one and dusting its stigma with pollen of the other, the hybrid seed is grown, and the best plants are selected and stabilised over several generations. The dwarf, high yielding wheat and rice varieties of the Green Revolution were produced in this way. In the same manner the plant may be exposed to radiation or chemicals to produce useful mutations, and in recent decades varieties have been made by genetic engineering, introducing a gene with a desired character directly into the plant's DNA; the resulting plant is a genetically modified (GM) crop, such as Bt cotton, which carries a bacterial gene that makes it resistant to bollworm. Tissue culture allows thousands of identical plants of a good variety to be raised quickly from a few cells. Once a variety is developed it is tested for several years in different regions, released, and its certified seed multiplied and distributed to farmers.

Like animals, plants need nutrients for growth and reproduction, and the yield of a crop depends on their adequate supply. Plants obtain carbon and oxygen from the air as carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen from water, and the remaining thirteen essential elements as mineral salts from the soil through the roots. Sixteen elements in all are essential, meaning that the plant cannot complete its life cycle without them. The thirteen soil nutrients are divided by the quantity in which the plant needs them.

Macronutrients are required in large amounts. There are six: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), the primary nutrients that crops remove from the soil in the largest quantities and that fertilisers chiefly supply; and calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and sulphur (S), the secondary nutrients. Nitrogen is part of proteins, chlorophyll and nucleic acids and promotes leafy growth; its deficiency shows as pale yellow older leaves and stunted plants. Phosphorus is needed for root development, flowering, seed formation and energy transfer (ATP); deficient plants are dark green with purple tinged leaves and poor roots. Potassium regulates water balance and the opening of stomata, strengthens stems and improves disease resistance and grain filling; deficiency shows as scorched leaf margins. Calcium builds the middle lamella of cell walls, magnesium is the central atom of chlorophyll, and sulphur is part of some amino acids and gives mustard and onion their pungency.

Micronutrients are required in very small amounts, but their absence still stops growth. There are seven: iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), boron (B), molybdenum (Mo) and chlorine (Cl). Iron and manganese are needed to make chlorophyll, zinc for enzymes and growth hormones, boron for cell division and fruit set, and molybdenum for nitrogen fixation. Zinc deficiency, which produces the 'khaira' disease of paddy with rusty brown spots on the leaves, is common in the rice soils of Odisha.

A deficiency of any nutrient affects the physiological processes of the plant, reduces growth, yield and resistance, and produces characteristic symptoms by which a farmer or extension worker can diagnose it. When crops are harvested, the nutrients they contain are carried away from the field; in a natural forest the fallen leaves and dead animals return them, but in a farm they must be replaced or the soil becomes poorer with each crop. This is done by adding manure and fertilisers, which are the subject of the next topic. Soil testing, offered free by government laboratories, measures the available N, P, K and micronutrients in a sample and lets the farmer apply exactly what is missing instead of guessing; the Soil Health Card given to every farmer records these results.

Nutrients removed by crops are replaced by adding manure, which is organic, or fertilisers, which are manufactured chemicals; the two have different strengths and the best farming uses both.

Manure is prepared by the decomposition of animal excreta and plant wastes. It contains only small amounts of nutrients but a large quantity of organic matter (humus), and this is its chief value: humus improves the structure of the soil, making sandy soil hold more water and clay soil drain and aerate better, it feeds the earthworms and micro-organisms that keep soil alive, it releases nutrients slowly over a long period, and it is a way of recycling farm waste. There are several kinds. Farmyard manure (FYM) is the decomposed mixture of cattle dung, urine and litter from the cattle shed. Compost is made by decomposing farm waste, kitchen waste, straw, weeds, sewage and vegetable refuse in pits for a few months. Vermicompost is compost made quickly with the help of earthworms, which eat the waste and pass it out as nutrient rich castings; it is prepared in shaded beds in about two months and is a small industry in many Odisha villages. Green manure is a quick growing leguminous crop such as sunn hemp (Crotalaria), dhaincha (Sesbania) or cowpea, sown before the main crop and ploughed into the soil while still green about six weeks later; it adds nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. Oil cakes, bone meal and fish meal are concentrated organic manures.

Fertilisers are commercially manufactured inorganic compounds that supply nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in concentrated, soluble form. Nitrogenous fertilisers include urea (46 per cent N), ammonium sulphate and calcium ammonium nitrate; phosphatic fertilisers include single superphosphate and di-ammonium phosphate (DAP); potassic fertilisers include muriate of potash (potassium chloride); and NPK mixtures supply all three. Because they are concentrated and quickly available, fertilisers produce a rapid response and are essential for high yielding varieties, which could not have fed the country without them. But they have costs. They are expensive and made from fossil fuels. They add no organic matter, and continuous use without manure destroys soil structure and kills soil organisms, so that the soil becomes hard and its fertility falls over the years. Being soluble, excess fertiliser is washed by rain into ponds, rivers and ground water, where nitrates cause eutrophication, the choking of water bodies by algae, and make drinking water unsafe. Fertiliser should therefore be applied in the right dose, at the right time and by the right method, based on a soil test.

Organic farming avoids chemical fertilisers and pesticides altogether. It uses manures, compost and green manure, biofertilisers such as Rhizobium and blue green algae, neem and other plant based pesticides, and crop rotation to maintain fertility and control pests; the produce fetches a higher price and the soil stays healthy, though yields may be a little lower at first.

Water is the input that most often limits yield. A crop needs water for photosynthesis, for transport of nutrients, for keeping cells turgid and for cooling, and it takes its water from the soil. Most of Indian agriculture is rain fed, and the monsoon is uncertain: it may fail, come late, stop early or fall all at once. Irrigation, the artificial supply of water to crops, frees the farmer from this uncertainty, allows a second and third crop in the dry season, makes it possible to use fertilisers and high yielding varieties, whose full response needs assured water, and raises both yield and the reliability of yield. Different crops need different amounts at different stages; paddy needs standing water for most of its life, while pulses and millets need little, and the critical stages, such as tillering and flowering in rice, must never suffer stress.

The sources and systems of irrigation depend on the region:

• Wells: dug wells and tube wells draw ground water, pumped by diesel or electric motors, and are the commonest source in most of India; over pumping, however, lowers the water table and in coastal Odisha lets salt water in.
• Canals: water from rivers and large reservoirs is carried by a network of main canals, branch canals and field channels; the Hirakud dam on the Mahanadi feeds a vast canal system in western Odisha, and the Mahanadi delta canals irrigate the coastal districts.
• Tanks: small reservoirs that store rain water from a catchment for use in the dry season, traditional in peninsular India and the tribal uplands of Odisha.
• River lift systems: where canals are impossible, water is lifted from rivers directly by pumps and carried to nearby fields.
• Rainwater harvesting and watershed management: check dams, percolation pits and contour bunds across small streams hold the rain where it falls, recharging ground water and stopping soil erosion, so that the whole watershed becomes wetter and greener.

How the water is applied also matters. Traditional flood irrigation lets water flow across the whole field and wastes much of it in evaporation and seepage. Furrow irrigation runs water in channels between rows. Sprinkler irrigation sprays water through nozzles like rain and suits undulating land and sandy soils. Drip irrigation delivers water drop by drop to the root of each plant through thin pipes; it uses less than half the water of flooding, keeps weeds down, and can carry dissolved fertiliser (fertigation), and it is the best system for orchards, vegetables and sugar cane in water scarce areas. Along with these, mulching the soil with straw or plastic to cut evaporation and choosing crops that suit the water available complete the picture of good water management. The aim is expressed in the slogan more crop per drop.

Growing the same single crop on the same land year after year exhausts particular nutrients, builds up the pests and diseases of that crop and puts all the farmer's risk on one harvest. Scientific cropping patterns arrange different crops in space and time so as to get more from the land and to protect it.

Mixed cropping is growing two or more crops together on the same field at the same time, with the seeds mixed and sown broadcast, so that the plants are intermingled without any set pattern. Common mixtures are wheat with gram, wheat with mustard, groundnut with sunflower, and maize with cowpea. The crops are chosen so that their needs differ: one is a cereal and the other a legume, one has deep roots and the other shallow, one matures early and the other late. The main purpose is to reduce risk: if rain fails or a pest strikes one crop, the other may still give a harvest, so complete failure is avoided. Mixed cropping also makes better use of nutrients and gives the family a range of foods, but because the crops are mixed they cannot be sown, manured, sprayed or harvested separately, and yields of each are lower than when grown alone.

Intercropping is growing two or more crops on the same field at the same time in a definite row pattern: for example one row of soyabean between rows of maize, or two rows of groundnut followed by one row of arhar, or bajra alternating with cowpea. Each crop can be sown, fertilised, sprayed and harvested on its own. The crops are chosen so that they use resources differently, a tall cereal and a short legume, a long duration and a short duration crop, so that they compete little and together give more than either alone. Intercropping increases total yield, uses land, light, water and nutrients more fully, keeps down weeds by covering the ground, reduces the spread of pests and diseases because the rows of one crop form a barrier for the pests of the other, and adds nitrogen when a legume is included.

Crop rotation is growing different crops on the same field in succession, in a planned sequence over a season or several years. The classic rotation alternates a cereal with a legume: paddy in kharif followed by moong, gram, groundnut or mustard in rabi; or maize, then potato, then mung. The legume, through the Rhizobium in its root nodules, fixes atmospheric nitrogen and leaves the soil richer for the following cereal, which reduces the fertiliser bill. Rotation also breaks the life cycles of pests, diseases and weeds that are specific to one crop, since their host is absent for a season; it uses nutrients from different depths of the soil, since crops root differently; it keeps the soil in better physical condition; it spreads the farmer's labour and income across the year; and it can give two or three harvests from one field in a year, which is what raises the cropping intensity. The choice of the rotation depends on the water available, the length of each crop and the market. Together, mixed cropping, intercropping and rotation are the traditional wisdom of Indian farming given a scientific basis.

A crop in the field is attacked by three kinds of enemies, and every year they destroy a large share of what could have been harvested; estimates for India run to a quarter or a third of total production. Crop protection management deals with weeds, insect pests and diseases.

Weeds are unwanted plants that grow along with the crop. They compete with it for water, nutrients, light and space, harbour pests and diseases, and lower the quality of the harvest; some, such as Parthenium (congress grass), are poisonous and cause allergies. Common weeds of Indian fields are Xanthium (gokhru), Cyperinus rotundus (motha, a sedge that is a serious weed of paddy), Amaranthus, Chenopodium (bathua) and wild oats. Weeds must be removed early, before they flower, because the damage is greatest in the first few weeks of the crop. Control is mechanical, by uprooting by hand, hoeing and weeding with a khurpi or a wheel hoe, and by ploughing before sowing to bury weed seeds; cultural, by timely sowing, correct spacing, intercropping and rotation so that the crop shades out the weeds; and chemical, by spraying weedicides (herbicides) such as 2,4-D, which kills broad leaved weeds in cereal fields without harming the crop, or butachlor in paddy. Chemicals are quick but costly and can harm the soil, so they are used with care.

Insect pests attack crops in three ways: by cutting the root, stem and leaf (grasshoppers, caterpillars, stem borers, grubs), by sucking the cell sap from various parts (aphids, jassids, bugs, brown plant hopper in rice), and by boring into stems and fruits (rice stem borer, sugar cane borer, cotton bollworm, fruit fly). Other pests are mites, nematodes in the soil, rats, birds and stray animals. The rice stem borer, gall midge and brown plant hopper are the most damaging pests of paddy in Odisha.

Diseases are caused by pathogens: fungi (rust of wheat, blast and sheath blight of rice, red rot of sugar cane, late blight of potato), bacteria (bacterial leaf blight of rice, citrus canker) and viruses (tungro of rice, leaf curl of tomato and chilli, mosaic of tobacco), and the pathogens are carried by soil, water, seed, air and insect vectors.

Pests and diseases are controlled by pesticides, chemicals sprayed on the crop or dusted on the seed: insecticides such as malathion, fungicides such as copper oxychloride and carbendazim, and seed treatments. But pesticides are poisonous to people, livestock, fish, bees and birds, they leave residues in food, they kill the natural enemies of pests, and pests develop resistance, so that more and stronger chemicals are needed. Modern practice therefore prefers preventive and biological methods and uses chemicals only when needed: sowing resistant varieties; using clean, treated seed; sowing at the right time so the crop escapes the pest's peak; summer ploughing to expose pests to the sun; rotation and intercropping; field sanitation, removing diseased plants and crop residues; traps such as light traps and pheromone traps; plant based pesticides such as neem oil; and biological control, releasing predators and parasites of the pest, such as ladybird beetles that eat aphids, Trichogramma wasps that parasitise borer eggs, and the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that kills caterpillars. This combination is called integrated pest management (IPM).

Losses do not end at harvest. A large part of the grain that Indian farmers produce, estimated at nearly ten per cent, is lost after harvest during threshing, drying, transport and above all storage, before it reaches the consumer. Since food that is lost after growing has cost the same labour, water and fertiliser as food that is eaten, preventing storage loss is one of the cheapest ways of increasing the food supply.

The agents of storage loss are of two kinds. Biotic factors are living organisms: insects such as the rice weevil, grain moth, khapra beetle and pulse beetle, which lay eggs in the grain and whose larvae hollow it out; rodents, chiefly rats and mice, which eat and spoil far more than they eat with their droppings and urine; fungi and bacteria, which grow on damp grain, cause it to heat, cake and rot, and produce dangerous poisons such as the aflatoxins of Aspergillus on badly stored groundnut and maize; and mites and birds. Abiotic factors are physical conditions, principally moisture and temperature. Grain stored with more than about 14 per cent moisture, or in a warm humid godown, respires, heats up and becomes an ideal home for insects and moulds. The result of these attacks is loss of weight, loss of quality, discolouration, bad smell, poor germination of seed grain and lower market price, and sometimes grain that is unfit or unsafe to eat.

Preventive and control measures are taken before and during storage:

• Proper drying: the grain is sun dried on a clean floor to a safe moisture level (about 12 to 14 per cent for cereals, lower for oilseeds) before it is stored; a simple test is that a grain of well dried paddy cracks with a sharp sound when bitten.
• Cleaning: chaff, dust, weed seeds and broken grains, which attract insects and moulds, are winnowed out.
• Clean, dry, rodent proof storage: the store is repaired, cleaned and fumigated before the new grain goes in; bags are stacked on wooden pallets away from walls; the store is well ventilated but keeps out moisture. Traditional Odisha stores such as the bamboo and mud kothi raised on stilts, and modern metal bins, cement bins and the Pusa bin with a plastic lining, protect against rats and moisture.
• Fumigation: for large stocks, gas fumigants such as aluminium phosphide tablets, which release phosphine gas, are used under sealed covers to kill insects at every stage; this is done only by trained persons because the gas is deadly.
• Traditional protectants: dry neem leaves, neem kernel powder, ash, turmeric and mustard oil mixed with pulses have long been used to keep insects away from household grain.
• Regular inspection of the stock for signs of insects, heating, moisture and rats, with prompt action.

At the national level the Food Corporation of India and state warehousing corporations hold buffer stocks in large godowns and silos, and the same principles of drying, cleaning, fumigation and rat proofing apply on a larger scale. Cold storage is used for potatoes, onions, fruits and vegetables, and controlled atmosphere storage for export fruit.

Animal husbandry is the scientific management of farm animals for food, work and other products: it covers their breeding, feeding, housing, health care and the use of their produce. As the demand for milk, eggs, meat and fish rises with population and income, animal husbandry has become as important as crop production, and in a mixed farm the two support each other. Livestock in India provides milk and meat, draught power for ploughing and carting, dung for manure and fuel, hides, wool and bones, and a source of income and insurance for the poorest rural families.

Cattle farming deals with the cow (Bos indicus) and the buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). Cattle are kept for two purposes: milk, given by the females (milch animals), and draught work, done by the males (draught animals) in ploughing, irrigation and carting. Indian breeds of cow are hardy and resistant to disease and heat but give little milk; the best of them are the milch breeds Sahiwal, Red Sindhi and Gir, the draught breeds Nagori, Hallikar and Malvi, and dual purpose breeds such as Haryana and Ongole; Odisha's own Binjharpuri and Ghumusari are draught types. Exotic (foreign) breeds such as Jersey, Holstein Friesian and Brown Swiss have long lactation periods and yield ten times as much milk but suffer in Indian heat and disease. The scientific answer is cross breeding: exotic bulls, or their semen through artificial insemination, are crossed with local cows to produce crossbred cows that combine high yield with hardiness. The milk yield of a cow depends on the breed, the length of the lactation period (the time it gives milk after calving, about 300 days), and its feeding and care. Among buffaloes, Murrah, Mehsana, Surti and Jaffarabadi are the leading milch breeds and give milk richer in fat than cows.

Proper management makes the difference between a productive animal and a poor one:

• Shelter: a well ventilated, roofed shed with a sloping floor that is easy to clean and stays dry, protecting the animals from rain, heat, cold and flies, with enough space for each animal.
• Feed: the ration has two parts. Roughage, bulky fibrous food such as green fodder (berseem, napier grass, maize fodder), hay and straw, keeps the digestion working. Concentrates, rich in protein and energy, such as oil cakes, grains, bran and pulses, are given to milch animals in proportion to their yield. Mineral mixtures and salt, and plenty of clean water, complete the diet.
• Hygiene and health: regular cleaning and brushing of the animals, washing before milking, clean milking vessels, and removal of dung; vaccination against foot and mouth disease, anthrax, haemorrhagic septicaemia and black quarter; deworming; and prompt treatment of external parasites (ticks, lice) and internal parasites (worms, liver flukes). A sick animal shows loss of appetite, dull coat, reduced milk and fever, and should be isolated and treated by a veterinarian.

The milk is collected and sold through cooperatives on the pattern of the Amul dairy in Gujarat, which was the model for Operation Flood; in Odisha the OMFED cooperative collects milk from village societies and processes it, giving the small farmer a fair and regular income.

Poultry refers to domesticated birds raised for eggs and meat: chiefly the fowl (chicken), and also ducks, geese, turkeys and quail. Poultry farming is the fastest growing branch of animal husbandry in India, because birds need little space and capital, grow quickly, convert feed to protein very efficiently, and eggs and chicken are affordable animal protein for the poor. India is now among the top producers of eggs and broiler meat in the world. Birds raised for eggs are called layers; birds raised for meat are broilers.

Indian native breeds such as Aseel, Kadaknath and Chittagong are hardy, disease resistant, good at brooding and tolerant of poor feed, but they lay only 60 to 80 small eggs a year and grow slowly. Exotic breeds such as the White Leghorn (a light, prolific layer of white eggs, 250 to 300 a year), Rhode Island Red and Plymouth Rock (dual purpose, brown eggs) lay far more but are less hardy. As with cattle, cross breeding of exotic and native breeds has produced improved varieties that combine the desirable traits: a larger number and size of eggs, faster growth of chicks, less feed for more output, tolerance of the Indian climate, and the ability to live on cheap fibrous agricultural byproducts. Improved dual purpose varieties for village backyards are Giriraja and Vanaraja.

Layers start laying at about five months and are kept for about a year of production; they need a diet rich in protein, calcium (for the eggshell) and vitamins, enough space, regular light (a day length of 16 hours keeps them laying) and quiet. Broilers are fast growing meat birds; fed a diet very rich in protein, fat and vitamins A and K, they reach a market weight of about 2 kg in six to eight weeks. The management of both depends on the same principles:

• Housing: a clean, dry, well ventilated house that protects from heat, rain and predators, with proper spacing to avoid crowding; birds may be kept on a deep litter floor of straw or husk, or in cages.
• Feed: a balanced mash of maize, rice bran, groundnut cake, fish meal, minerals and vitamins, with clean water always available; feed is the largest cost, about 70 per cent.
• Hygiene: regular cleaning of the house, litter and equipment, and disposal of droppings, which make excellent manure.
• Disease control: poultry are attacked by viruses (Ranikhet or Newcastle disease, fowl pox, bird flu), bacteria (fowl cholera, salmonella), fungi (aspergillosis) and parasites (coccidiosis, worms); crowding, damp litter and poor feed spread them fast and can wipe out a flock. Vaccination against Ranikhet, Marek's, Gumboro and fowl pox on a fixed schedule, together with sanitation and quarantine of sick birds, is the answer.

Odisha's poultry sector includes commercial broiler farms near the towns and backyard flocks of native and improved birds in almost every tribal and coastal village, and duck keeping around the water bodies of the delta, which yields eggs, controls snails and pests in paddy fields and adds manure to fish ponds in the integrated duck-fish-paddy system.

Fish is a cheap, easily digested source of high quality protein, vitamins and minerals, and for the coastal, riverine and lake side people of Odisha it is the main animal food and a major livelihood. Fisheries includes true fish (finfish) and also shellfish such as prawns, crabs and molluscs. Fish are obtained in two ways: by catching them from natural waters (capture fishery) and by rearing them in confined waters (culture fishery or aquaculture). Each is practised in both marine (sea) and inland (fresh and brackish) waters.

Marine fisheries exploit India's 7,500 km coastline and the sea out to 200 nautical miles. The commonly caught marine fish are pomfret, mackerel, tuna, sardine, Bombay duck, hilsa and seer fish, and shellfish such as prawns, mussels and oysters. Fishing is done from traditional catamarans and country boats with nets close to shore, and from mechanised trawlers and gill netters further out; satellite images and echo sounders are now used to locate shoals, greatly increasing the catch. Because the catch from the open sea cannot be increased indefinitely without exhausting the stocks, and Indian marine catches have already levelled off, attention has turned to mariculture, the culture of marine organisms in coastal waters: finned fish such as mullets, bhetki and pearl spot in enclosures; shellfish such as prawns, mussels and oysters on rafts and in ponds; and seaweeds. The prawn farms along the Odisha coast, especially around Chilika and Balasore, and the pearl oyster culture in which a nucleus is placed in the oyster to grow a pearl, are examples. The state's Gahirmatha coast is closed to fishing during the turtle nesting season, an example of the regulation that capture fishery needs.

Inland fisheries use fresh water (rivers, canals, reservoirs, tanks, ponds and paddy fields) and brackish water where rivers meet the sea (estuaries, lagoons such as Chilika, and mangrove creeks). Capture fishing in these waters gives a limited yield, so most inland production comes from fish culture in ponds. Fish farming is sometimes combined with paddy cultivation, fish being grown in the flooded field, and in the integrated system the pond receives duck and cattle droppings as fertiliser and the pond silt goes back to the field.

The important cultivated fresh water fish are the Indian major carps, catla, rohu and mrigal, and the introduced exotic carps, silver carp, grass carp and common carp. Fish culture has its problems: the seed (fry) of the major carps was traditionally collected from rivers during the monsoon breeding season, which was uncertain and mixed with unwanted species; the answer has been induced breeding, in which mature fish in ponds are injected with pituitary hormone so that they spawn in captivity, giving pure seed in quantity. Ponds must be prepared by draining or poisoning to remove predatory and weed fish, limed, manured with cattle dung to grow plankton, and stocked at the right density; the fish are given supplementary feed of rice bran and oil cake and harvested when they reach a kilogram or so. Diseases and the fouling of water by over feeding are controlled by good management. Odisha's fish production comes from all these sources, and the Chilika prawn and crab fisheries, the reservoir fisheries of Hirakud, and the village tank culture of carps together support lakhs of families.

A pond is not a uniform space. Its surface, its middle depths and its bottom each hold different food: floating plants and plankton at the top, zooplankton and drifting organic matter in the middle, worms, insect larvae and decaying detritus on the bottom, and weeds growing along the edges. A single species of fish feeds in only one of these zones and leaves the food of the others unused. Composite fish culture (polyculture) solves this by stocking the pond with five or six species of fish chosen so that they occupy different zones and eat different foods, and so do not compete with one another. The pond's food is fully used, the total yield is far higher than any single species would give, and the fish often help each other: the grass carp's droppings fertilise the water and grow plankton for the others.

The standard combination uses three Indian major carps and three exotic carps:

The proportion is adjusted to the pond: typically about 30 to 40 per cent surface feeders, 30 to 35 per cent column feeders and 30 per cent bottom feeders, stocked at about 5,000 to 10,000 fingerlings per hectare. The fish grow to 1 kg or more in a year, and a well managed pond yields 3 to 6 tonnes per hectare against a few hundred kilograms from an unmanaged one.

The management of a composite culture pond follows a sequence. The pond is first cleared of aquatic weeds, which shade the water and shelter unwanted fish, by hand, by weedicides or by stocking grass carp. Predatory fish (murrel, catfish) and weed fish (small minnows that compete for food) are removed by draining, netting or applying mahua oil cake, which kills fish and then decomposes into manure. Lime is applied to correct the acidity and kill parasites. The pond is then manured with cattle dung, poultry droppings or fertiliser to grow a rich crop of plankton, the natural food. Healthy fingerlings of the six species are stocked in the right proportion. Supplementary feed of rice bran and oil cake in equal parts is given daily at about 2 to 3 per cent of the body weight, and the water is watched for its colour, oxygen and disease. Partial harvesting of the larger fish and restocking keep the pond in production throughout the year.

The main difficulty of composite culture is that the carps breed only in the monsoon, in flowing water, and the fry collected from rivers is mixed with other species. Hormonal induced breeding has removed this problem: brood fish are injected with fish pituitary extract or synthetic hormone, spawn in the hatchery, and pure seed of each species is available in quantity. Odisha's fish farmers, who work thousands of village tanks and many of whom are members of Fish Farmers' Development Agencies, use this system to raise the state's fresh water fish production.

Bee keeping or apiculture is the rearing of honey bees in artificial hives for the production of honey and wax, and it is an ideal side occupation for farmers because it needs little land, little capital, little labour and gives a valuable product while improving the crops around it through pollination. Honey has been gathered from wild hives in India since ancient times, and Odisha's forests, especially in the tribal districts, yield a large quantity of wild honey; scientific bee keeping in boxes is a more recent and more reliable practice.

Several species of honey bee are used. The Indian bee Apis cerana indica is the species commonly domesticated in India; it is gentle, adapted to the climate and nests in enclosed spaces, so it accepts a box hive, but it gives a modest yield of 6 to 8 kg of honey per hive a year. The rock bee Apis dorsata is large and fierce, builds a single huge comb on cliffs and tall trees, and gives up to 40 kg per comb, but it cannot be kept in hives and is only robbed in the wild. The little bee Apis florea builds small combs on bushes and gives little honey. The Italian bee Apis mellifera, a European species introduced in the 1960s, is now preferred by commercial bee keepers: it is gentle, stings less, produces a large amount of honey (25 to 40 kg per hive), breeds fast, and stays in a hive for a long time; it is well adapted to Indian conditions in most regions. Stingless bees (Trigona) are also kept for their medicinal honey.

A bee colony consists of one queen, a fertile female that lays all the eggs, a few hundred drones, males whose only function is to mate with the queen, and tens of thousands of workers, sterile females that gather nectar and pollen, build the wax comb, feed the larvae, guard the hive and make honey by evaporating and enzymatically changing nectar. The colony lives in a hive of vertical wax combs with hexagonal cells. The bee keeper houses the colony in a wooden box hive with removable frames, so that honey can be taken from the upper frames (the super) without disturbing the brood in the lower ones, using a centrifugal extractor. The apiary is placed in a shaded, quiet place with clean water nearby.

The quantity and quality of honey depend on the pasturage: the flowers available to the bees within their flying range of about a kilometre for collecting nectar and pollen. The kind of flowers determines the taste, colour and aroma of the honey; litchi, mustard, eucalyptus, sunflower, coriander, jamun, karanj, neem, mango and the forest trees of Odisha each give a distinct honey. A good apiary site has abundant and continuous bee flora through the year, and bee keepers often move their hives to follow the flowering of crops (migratory bee keeping). Bees repay the farmer: they are the chief pollinators of mustard, sunflower, fruit trees, cucurbits and many vegetables, and placing hives in an orchard or field raises the yield of the crop by a quarter or more. Pesticide spraying during flowering, however, kills bees, and must be avoided or done in the evening when bees are in the hive. Besides honey and wax, the products of bee keeping include royal jelly, bee bread (pollen) and propolis, all of which have a market.